1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the area of document processing and electronic publishing system, and more particularly, relates to techniques for designing extensible style sheets using meta-tag information and/or differentiated associated meta-tag information, where the designed extensible style sheets are for various presentations and information exchange.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a rapidly growing communication network of interconnected computers around the world. Together, these millions of connected computers form a vast repository of hyperlinked information that is readily accessible by any of the connected computers from anywhere and anytime. With millions of web pages being created and added to this vast repository each day or year, there is a tremendous need to quickly and easily convert documents, such as presentations, data sheets or brochures, into a format presentable to and accessible by other applications or devices on the Internet.
It is well known that a preferable format that is presentable to a web browsing application (e.g. a browser) is in a markup language, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) or Wireless Markup Language (WML). Files or documents that are so composed, edited or managed for web browsing applications are commonly referred to as structured files or documents. Among the structured documents, a content-oriented structured document like XML or SGML is capable of supporting any markup tags from document type definitions (DTD) or schema while a presentation document in HTML or WML can only support a fixed set of markup tags.
The demand for dynamically converting the content-oriented structured documents with proper style transformation for a particular request medium opens a new paradigm for information exchange and storage. For example, contents in a website are stored in XML formats. If a web browser (e.g., Netscape or IE) in a desktop computer requests information form the website, the website is preferably to convert the contents in XML into converted contents in HTML and subsequently sends the converted files back to the browser. If a portable device (e.g. a PDA or internet-enabled cell phone) requests information by a micro-browser from the same website, the website is preferably to convert the contents in XML into converted contents in WML and send the converted files back to the micro-browser. Furthermore, the website can also convert the internal XML into another type of XML so as to exchange information between websites.
Dynamically converting the content-oriented structured documents into desired presentation requires what is called a style sheet, a term extended from print publishing to online media. A style sheet is a definition of a document's appearance in terms of such elements as: a default typeface, size, and color for headings and body text, how front matter (preface, figure list, title page, and so forth) should look and how all or individual sections should be laid out in terms of space.
One of the methods of creating a style sheet for an XML file to an HTML file involves matching the data or attributes of HTML elements with the associated meta-tag information in the XML file, e.g., data or attributes of XML elements. A user can create a new source HTML file by inserting the associated meta-tag information of the source XML file as the data or attributes of the elements of the source HTML file. Then the user can manipulate/add/subtract the HTML tag or tags around the associated meta-tag information of the source XML file in the source HTML file for customizing the HTML tags using WYSISWYG HTML editors such as Microsoft FrontPage, macromedia Dreamweaver, or Adobe goLive so that the customized HTML tags comprises the desired outcome of the target XSL file.
Once desired customized HTML tags are made around the inserted associated meta-tag information of the XML file in the HTML file, a software process can use a matching algorithm to identify the particular XML data or attributes by matching the associated meta-tag information of the HTML elements. By identifying the particular XML data or attributes, the software process may automatically generate meta-tag information that hold the information about the relationships of the XML data or attributes in respect to its parent elements, its sibling elements, and its relationship with the root element. The location of the associated meta-tag information and its relationship with HTML tags may also be used to insert the corresponding meta-tag information at a matched location in the source HTML file in respect to its relations to the customized HTML tags. The combination of the meta-tag information with the customized HTML tags can then be used to generate the style sheet or a target XSL file.
However, this process can be problematic if an XML file contains elements with the same associated meta-tag information. FIG. 1A shows an example that has two identical elements 10, and 14. A software process that relies on matching the associated meta-tag information would not be able to differentiate as to whether the correct associated meta-tag information is from 10 or from 14 of FIG. 1A.
Today, most websites are written in HTML, and there is a growing need for converting the HTML files into XML files and extensible style sheet language for transformation (XSLT) files to fully utilize the benefit of the XML has to offer. A similar problem may be experienced when an HTML file is converted to an XML file. FIG. 1B shows an HTML file. If a user wishes to convert a data portion 16 as <xsl:value of select=“root/book/author/text( )”/>, then a software process would not be able to differentiate which one of the data portions 14 or 16 of the HTML file should be modified with meta-tag information since both data portions 14 or 16 are identical.
There is therefore a need for solutions that can uniquely identify all the associated meta-tag information in a markup language file (e.g., an XML file).
Since the introduction of the XML, XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation) has been proposed as a separate subset of XML for displaying via HTML the content of an XML file into various media such as web-browsers, hand-held devices, and wireless phones. One of the methods of creating an extensible style sheet for an XML document involves matching data or attributes of an HTML document with the associated meta-tag information, i.e. data or attributes of the XML document. Thus, a new source HTML document can be created by inserting the associated meta-tag information of the source XML document as the data or attributes of the source HTML document. Then the user can manipulate/add/subtract the HTML tags around the associated meta-tag information of the source XML document in the source HTML document for customizing the HTML tags using WYSISWYG HTML editors such as Microsoft FrontPage, macromedia Dreamweaver, or Adobe goLive so that the customized HTML tags comprises the desired looks and feels of the target XSLT for the given XML document.
Once desired customized HTML tags are made around the inserted associated meta-tag information of the XML document as an HTML document, a software process can use a matching algorithm so that the matched associated meta-tag information of the HTML elements can be used to identify the corresponding XML data or attributes. By identifying the particular XML data or attributes, the software process can automatically generate meta-tag information that hold the information about the relation of the XML data or attributes with respect to its parent elements, its sibling elements, or its relationship with the root element. The location of the matching associated meta-tag information and its relationship with HTML tags can also be used to insert the corresponding meta-tag information at the matched location in the source HTML document with respect to its relations to the customized HTML tags. The combination of the meta-tag information with the customized HTML tags can then be used to generate the target XSL file.
However, this process can be problematic if the meta-tag information contains only the information about the relationship of the XML data and attributes from the elements. An XSLT contains rich sets of functionalities such as <xsl:for-each/> that can't be described without any information from user's requirements for functionalities. Thus, there is another need for creating an XSLT that reflects uers required operations and functionalities.
To accommodate the growing need for converting the HTML files into XML files and extensible style sheet language for transformation (XSLT) files to fully utilize the benefit of the XML has to offer, there is still another need to streamline the conversion process from one markup language file (e.g. HTML) to another markup language file (e.g. XML).